International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172

Published online September 20, 2014 (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijla)

doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20140205.14

ISSN: 2331-0553 (Print); ISSN: 2331-057X (Online)

Witches before flying

Shokhan Rasool Ahmed

English Department, University of Sulaimani, Sulaimani/Kurdistan- Iraq

Email address: shokhan_rasul@yahoo.com

To cite this article: Shokhan Rasool Ahmed. Witches before Flying. International Journal of Literature and Arts. Vol. 2, No. 5, 2014, pp. 155-172.

doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20140205.14

Abstract: This paper examines Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), and The Late Lancashire Witches (1634) by Thomas

Heywood and Richard Brome, and considers in detail the witch scenes in both plays and their stage directions during their

entrances and exits. The witches in the Jacobean Macbeth of the First Folio, do not explicitly fly in the stage directions.

However, they do in the Restoration Macbeth, namely in Davenant’s second Quarto (1674). The question to be raised here

is: what evidence is there in the pre-Restoration Macbeth that the witches flew? In order to explore this, we must consider

what performance spaces were used for Macbeth in the Jacobean period. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Heywood and

Brome’s The Late Lancashire Witches form an interesting comparison since they were both revised by other writers. The

Late Lancashire Witches has not received as much scholarly attention as the other witch plays discussed here. Therefore, as

a comparative study, this paper will also discuss the joint authorship of Heywood and Brome in The Late Lancashire

Witches and the stage directions of the witch scenes. Although it seems that the witches did not fly in Heywood’s and

Brome’s version, there is evidence that the stage directions called for flight in The Lancashire Witches (1681), Thomas

Shadwell’s later version. A further illuminating comparison between these plays is that the creatures we are considering

here are sinister figures in Macbeth but comic figures in The Lancashire Witches. The audience can see that the three Weird

Sisters enter the stage and then vanish into the air, but do not see them fly.

Keywords: Stage Directions in the Jacobean Macbeth, Stage Directions in the Restoration Macbeth,

Stage Directions in Thomas Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches, Tegue O Divelly the Irish-Priest,

and Pepys’ Response to Macbeth The Late Lancashire Witches

1. Introduction

This paper examines Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), and

The Late Lancashire Witches (1634) by Thomas Heywood

and Richard Brome, and considers in detail the witch

scenes in both plays and their stage directions during their

entrances and exits. The witches in the Jacobean Macbeth

of the First Folio, do not explicitly fly in the stage

directions. However, they do in the Restoration Macbeth,

namely in Davenant’s second Quarto (1674). The question

to be raised here is: what evidence is there in the pre-

Restoration Macbeth that the witches flew? In order to

explore this, we must consider what performance spaces

were used for Macbeth in the Jacobean period.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Heywood and Brome’s The

Late Lancashire Witches form an interesting comparison

since they were both revised by other writers. The Late

Lancashire Witches has not received as much scholarly

attention as the other witch plays discussed here. Therefore,

as a comparative study, this paper will also discuss the joint

authorship of Heywood and Brome in The Late Lancashire

Witches and the stage directions of the witch scenes.

Although it seems that the witches did not fly in

Heywood’s and Brome’s version, there is evidence that the

stage directions called for flight in The Lancashire Witches

(1681), Thomas Shadwell’s later version. A further

illuminating comparison between these plays is that the

creatures we are considering here are sinister figures in

Macbeth but comic figures in The Lancashire Witches. The

audience can see that the three Weird Sisters enter the stage

and then vanish into the air, but do not see them fly.

2. Shakespeare’s Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth comes sixth in the list of

Tragedies in Shakespeare’s First Folio. The text of Macbeth

156 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

was taken from a prompt-book,1 and it was not entered in

the stationers’ books, nor printed, until 1623.2 St Clair

suggests that it was due to their representation of political

usurpation that ‘Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and

Macbeth were among the Shakespearean plays that were

not printed in Shakespeare’s life time’.3 Macbeth consists

of five acts, and presents a similar dramatic progression to

Shakespeare’s other tragedies. The tension rises in the first

half of the play (Act 2), reaching a climax in Act 3 before

falling in the second half with the hero’s declining power

(Act 4), finally ending with the downfall of the hero in

Macbeth’s death (Act 5).

The supernatural characters, which are discussed in this

chapter, are the Three Sisters, Hecate and the other witches.

The three Weird Sisters have a major role in the play, but

not Hecate and her fellow witches. The focus here is on the

witches’ activities and their influence upon the non-

supernatural characters in the play. The chapter examines

the way they enter and exit the stage both before and after

the Hecate additions which were appended to Macbeth.

Furthermore, it explores whether the Hecate scene was

written by Shakespeare or whether it was interpolated into

Macbeth by someone other than Shakespeare on the

occasion of a theatrical revival.

3. Early Performances of Macbeth

We know that Macbeth was first performed between

1605 and 1606, two years after the accession of King James

I, when there was a great demand for new entertainment

involving witches among the theatregoers.4 The accession

of King James made Shakespeare’s Macbeth ‘commercially

viable and creatively attractive’, and because of the plague

in 1606 (which had closed the theatres) and economic

necessity, may have led the King’s Men to present Macbeth

at Court first.5 Macbeth was also performed at the Globe

on the 20th of April, 1611; Dr Simon Forman recorded one

spectacular effect that does not appear in the extant text

(Act 1, scene 3):

In Mackbeth at the Glob, 16jo, the 20 of Aprell [Sat.]

there was to be obserued, first, how Mackbeth and Bancko,

1 William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by

Gary Taylor, and Stanley Wells, 2nd

ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p.

xxxv.

2 William Shakespeare, The dramatic writings of Will. Shakspere, with the

notes of all the various commentators; Eighteenth Century Collections Online,

p. 379.

3 William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 143.

4 William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by Jonathan Bate

and Eric Rasmussen (London: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2009), p. 6.

5 William Shakespeare, The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by A.

R. Braunmuller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 8-9. The

aerial gyrations of the witches in Jacobean drama were generally comic in

effect and dramatists after the succession of James I tried to stage witchcraft

practices in the theatres in order to satisfy their new audiences’ demand for ever

more sophisticated visual spectacle.

2 noble men of Scotland, Ridinge thorowe a wod, the[r]

stode before them 3 women feiries or Nimphes (...)6

‘Riding’ on horseback, as noted by Dessen and Thomson,

‘occurs in plays performed at the Globe, before Alarum for

London and after The Late Lancashire Witches and the

original performance of Macbeth’.7 Forman only recorded

three witches, did not mention Hecate and gave no

reference to flying. Forman calls them ‘feiries or Nimphes’,

which is significantly different. It suggests that their

costume was not necessarily hag-like, whatever Macbeth’s

words suggest. The audience may have amused by the

visual spectacle of the witches since they are not sinister

figures, and their gender is recognizably female and had a

feminine appearance. Nosworthy argues that the three

Sisters turned into ‘“secret, black & midnight hags” with

choppy fingers, skinny lips and beards’ in 1612 under the

influence of the Court Masque.8 According to Nosworthy,

there is not only a revision in the presentation of the three

Sisters in 1612 but Shakespeare also added the figure of

Hecate, (Act 1, scene 3, 43-7) as it was (Act 4, scene 1, 48-

9) if that scene figured at all in the original.9 The Hecate

scene and the two songs were probably inserted into the

Folio text of Macbeth after the King’s Men performed The

Witch at the Blackfriars and employed instrumentalists to

provided musical intermissions before and during

performances.10 That said, Shakespeare’s original trio of

witches did not fly.11 Nosworthy also argues that there is a

certain correspondence between Shakespeare’s and

Middleton’s use of magical ingredients which belongs to

Shakespeare’s revision of 1612 in which Shakespeare

wanted to convert Macbeth into a tragedy of spectacle.12

Nosworthy does not account for Shakespeare having retired

to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1611, some years before his

death. His dramatic career was over, and his last play The

Tempest was written in the same year. It is likely that

Shakespeare himself did not have a hand in inserting the

Hecate scenes into the Folio text of Macbeth.

Although Nosworthy’s opinion on Hecate’s interpolation

in Macbeth is different from other contemporary scholars,

he believes that Middleton had no hand in Macbeth and that

Shakespeare is the sole author and reviser, the purpose of

6 Quoted in The Arden Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by Kenneth Muir (London:

Methuen, 1951), p. xv.

7 Ibid., p. 388. Such a staging, riding on a horseback, was more likely

performed in an outdoor playhouse. Although, a horse appears in Act 5, Scene 5

in the Cambridge Latin play Ricardus Tertius by Thomas Legge, which was

performed in St. John’s college in 1580. In Macbeth, the title character and

Banquo are riding through a wood when three women ‘feiries’ or ‘Nimphes’

appear.

8 J. M. Nosworthy, Shakespeare’s Occasional Plays: Their Origin and

Transmission (London: Edward Arnold, 1965), p. 43.

9 Ibid., p. 43.

10 Glynne Wickham, ‘To Fly Or Not To Fly’, The Problem of Hecate in

Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”’ in Essays on Drama and Theatre, ed. by Benjamin

Hunningher (Amsterdam: Baarn, 1973), pp. 175-82 ( p. 179).

11Ibid., p. 175.

12 Nosworthy, Shakespeare’s Occasional Plays, pp. 42-44.

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 157

his revision, being ‘to make the play conformable to the

newly prevalent taste for spectacle and melodrama, as

sponsored by Beaumont and Fletcher’. 13 He thinks

Macbeth was a result of royal command and a hasty

assignment. Fraser criticizes Nosworthy’s belief that

Shakespeare wrote Macbeth hastily under the influence of

royal command in 1606 while he was preoccupied with

Antony and Cleopatra. He revised Macbeth around 1612,

and in this revision, the three nymphs or fairies reported by

Simon Forman in 1611 turned to three hags, under the

influence of Jonson's Masque of Queens and Middleton's

The Witch (which also supplied two songs, the flying

machine, and the cauldron).14 Smidt agrees with previous

scholars that, Shakespeare revised his occasional plays for

use at the Globe, ‘cutting, augmenting, and altering as

required in each case, and that he even originally wrote

them with a thrifty view to a double use, private and

public’.15 In contrast, Nosworthy as well as his reviewers,

Fraser and Smidt, fail to mention that the Middleton

material appeared after The Witch was staged around 1616

by which time Shakespeare had retired. At this point he was

no longer active in his career to revise his productions. It

seems more likely then, Macbeth was revised, for

entertainment purposes, not by Shakespeare himself but by

the King’s Men Company. As a result, the alterations made

to the play, including the addition of the Hecate scenes and

the new spectacle of flying witches reflect the cultural

climate of a period in which belief in witchcraft was

increasing.

There is another potential explanation for these

conditions. Anne Lancashire argues that if the added witch

songs and dancing come from Middleton’s The Witch,

‘might they not have been interpolated into Macbeth not

only for their theatrical effectiveness but also for their

political notoriety?’16 Lancashire thinks that because of

The Witch’s political connections, namely the 1615-16

Overbury murder trials and convictions, the play was

suppressed and the King’s Men carried on, ‘keeping the

witch scenes in the public eye through use of their songs

and dancing in another King’s Men play not without its

own political overtones’.17 However, this political reading

13 Russell Fraser, review of ‘Conceptions of Shakespeare’ ed. by Alfred

Harbage; ‘Shakespeare’s Occasional Plays: Their Origin and Transmission’ ed.

by. p. 59.

14 Russell Fraser, review of ‘Conceptions of Shakespeare’ ed. by Alfred

Harbage; ‘Shakespeare’s Occasional Plays: Their Origin and Transmission’ ed.

by J. M. Nosworthy. Renaissance Quarterly, 20 (1967), 57-61 (p. 59). See also

Ernest Schanzer, review of ‘Shakespeare’s Occasional plays: Their Origin and

Transmission’, ed. by J. M. Nosworthy. Review of English Literature, 18 (1967),

62-64 (p. 63).

15 Kristian Smidt, review of ‘Shakespeare’s Occasional plays: Their Origin and

Transmission’, ed. by J. M. Nosworthy, Shakespeare Quarterly, 18 (1967), 190-

191 (p. 191). 16

Ann Lancashire, ‘The Witch: Stage Flop or Political Mistake’ in

Accompaninge the Players: Essays Celebrating Thomas Middleton, 1580-1980,

ed. by Kenneth Friedenreich (New York: AMS Press, 1983), pp. 161-181 (p.

174).

17 Ibid., p. 74.

ignores the fact that witches were in vogue in the 1610s.

Thus, a more straightforward explanation is that the King’s

Men wanted to enhance the role of the witches in

Shakespeare’s play for entertainment purposes.

As Gary Taylor aptly puts it, the Hecate scenes ‘clearly

require efficient and quiet flying machinery’ and ‘such

machinery was clearly available at the Blackfriars’.18 The

flight of the witches in the Hecate scenes may not have

been staged at the Globe as it was not as well-equipped

with flying machinery as Blackfriars. 19 In other words,

pre-Blackfriars Macbeth did not have the Hecate scenes,

but after the play was adapted, the Hecate scenes were

added and then staged at the Blackfriars. After 1608, the

plays were artfully contrived to suit the conditions of

Blackfriars Theatre.

4. The Witch Scenes in Macbeth

The Witches appear in Act 1, scenes 1 & 3, Act 3, scene

5, and Act 4, scene 1. The witches in Macbeth vanish and

dispel once they make prophecies to Macbeth and finish

casting spells on him (Act 1, scene 3). The question here is

why Hecate has been inserted into Macbeth? A likely

answer is that Hecate and her crew’s presence on stage

offered a kind of magic show, and it may also reflect a taste

of the elite Jacobean audience. Briggs points out that

witchcraft, ‘is rather decorative than realistic’ in

Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Jonson’s The Masque of Queens

and Middleton’s The Witch.20 This may be correct for The

Masque of Queens and Macbeth, although not for The

Witch, which had political and social ramifications to its

witchcraft scenes (as we shall later see). Jonson’s hags are

presented with spectacular costumes and effects, and he

concentrates more on witches’ festivities. However, Jonson

and Shakespeare are somewhat similar in the way they

represent their hags ‘primarily through words’ rather than

machines or technological effects. Shakespeare uses

language to convey their diabolic nature to a greater extent

than either Middleton or Jonson do, conjuring up their

physical movements through description. When Macbeth

18 Thomas Middleton, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture:

A Companion to the Collected Works, ed. by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), p. 384.

19 See example, William Shakespeare, The New Cambridge Shakespeare:

Macbeth, ed. by A. R. Braunmuller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1997), p.256. T. J. King argues that such machinery might not have been

required in a variety of plays and might not been available in the majority of

playhouses. T. J. King, ‘Shakespearean Staging, 1599-1642’, in The

Elizabethan Theatre, ed. by David Galloway, 3 vols (Don Mills: The

Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1973), pp. 1-13 (p. 11); Irwin Smith

believes that Blackfriars had a kind of effective apparatus for descending and

ascending actors and equipment; Irwin Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars

Playhouse: Its History and Its Design (London: Peter Owen, 1964), pp. 414-

418. See also Wickham, ‘To Fly Not To Fly?’, p. 175. And, Bernard Beckerman,

Shakespeare at the G Beckerman lobe, 1599-1609 (New York: Macmillan,

1962), p. 94.

20 Rossell Hope Robbins, review of ‘Pale Hecate’s Team’ ed. Katherine M.

Briggs’, Renaissance News, 16 (1963), 28-30 (p. 29).

158 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

and Banquo speak of them, he uses visual ‘verbs’ to

describe the departure of the witches who ‘hover through

the fog and filthy air’ (I.i.10), ‘vanish into the filthy air’ and

have ‘melted as a breath into the wind’ (I.iii. 78-80).

The sudden disappearance of the witches is suggested

even as the method of their departure is indicated. Their

abrupt vanishing or melting is achieved through one of the

doors into the tiring-house rather than through flying

machinery, i.e. free flight. Macbeth comments on the

sudden departure of the witches to the air when he

converses with Lenox:

LENOX. What’s your Grace’s will?

MACBETH. Saw you the Weyard Sisters?

LENOX. No my Lord

MACBETH. Come they not by you?

LENOX. No indeed my Lord.

MACBETH. Infected be the Ayre whereon they ride

(IV.i.149-157)

This line, ‘Come they not by you?’, indicates that the

Weird Sisters depart, not through a trapdoor, but through

one of the doors into the tiring-house, the same door

through which Lenox then enters. This makes sense of why

Macbeth might expect Lenox to see them coming ‘by’ him.

Shakespeare makes use of the theatrical resources at his

disposal. Elsewhere, to dramatize the visual spectacle of the

witches and Hecate, Shakespeare makes use of the heavens.

It seems that the witches in Macbeth are also located in the

heavens since Hecate ‘sits in a foggy cloud’ (III.v.37). ‘A

foggy cloud’ here might possibly mean ‘a theatrical

“machine” that lifted the actor from the stage’.21 However,

this song belongs to the pre-Folio Macbeth before it was

revised. There is no evidence of any kind of smoke

machine in existence before Macbeth was written (1606).

Harris argues that when the spirit summons Hecate in

Macbeth, ‘the flying machinery was concealed in folds of

light drapery, a device that was used extensively in the

masques to achieve such effect’.22 As in traditional Greek

drama, ‘Hecate is taken up in the cloud, i.e. a stage car,

drawn up on pulleys, and concealed by billowing

draperies’, 23 in order to intervene in the natural order.

Another suggestion of Harris regarding how Macbeth’s

witches flew is that, ‘the Sisters climbed up stepladders

leading from the yard into which the stage projected’.24

Before the Kings’ Men leased the Blackfriars, the Weird

Sisters probably made their entrances and exits through the

mechanized trapdoor. The mechanical trapdoor is a more

plausible method for the Sisters to ascend and descend the

stage in case no flying devices were available. All the

departures of the witches are accompanied by thunder and

21 Shakespeare, Macbeth by Braumuller, p. 186.

22 Anthony Harris, Night’s Black Agents: Witchcraft and Magic in Seventeenth-

century English Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p.

170.

23 Macbeth, ed. by Kenneth Muir, p. 101.

24 Harris, Night’s Black Agents, p. 162.

lightning effects, which are used to drown the creaking

sound of the trapdoor as well as masking their descent.

It seems that in the cauldron scene the main trap was

used to raise the three Weird Sisters to gather around the

cauldron. Once the cauldron was removed in the stage,

music was provided in order to disguise the noise of the

mechanized trap:

Why sinks that cauldron, and what noise is this? (IV.i.106)

The Weird Sisters create the Apparitions (demonic spirits)

and summon them. The entrance and departure of the three

apparitions may be through the mechanized trap as well as

the show of the eight kings. However, if Macbeth was

performed at Greenwich or Hampton Court, the Sisters’

entrance may have been made through a curtain similar to

that probably used in the Masque as traps would not have

been available in these performance spaces.25 There was at

least one trap door situated in the main stage in most of

Elizabethan theatres, through which, as Harris notes, actors

and properties could rise and descend by means of a

mechanised structure operated by ropes attached to

windlass. Some of these traps were capable of carrying two

or more actors simultaneously and ascents and descents

could be achieved with considerable rapidity.26

In the Cauldron scene, three apparitions also descend

from the heavens to tell Macbeth about his future. Then

Hecate calls the witches all to dance with music and then

vanish to the air. The ghost also descends after the

alteration is made (see stage directions in the Restoration

Macbeth, p. 64), but in the folio text of Macbeth simply

‘enters’: enter the Ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeth’s

place (III. iv)27

The Ghost of Banquo rises at his feet and it seems that

Banquo’s ghost rises on a trap. The three apparitions

possibly also rise up through a stepladder, or trap. The three

weird Sisters and Hecate appear and hover over Macbeth.

These ascents and descents were made through traps in

early performances but they might have been done through

flying on wires at the Blackfriars by the King’s Men with

the help of musical instruments.

The Witches of Macbeth

25 Ibid., p. 168.

26 Ibid., p. 152.

27 William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and

Tragedies, (London: 1623), p. 141.

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 159

Fig. 1. Image of the three Sisters if they flew into the stage by a chariot.

Scholes’s view of the Hecate scene highlights the

association between Shakespeare’s use of music and the

supernatural. His supernatural entities such as fairies,

witches and sometimes ghosts, were especially associated

with music.28 For instance, there is a hidden music when

Hecate is summoned in the song ‘Come away’ and the

audience does not know where this mysterious music

comes from. In the other scene when Hecate orders the

witches to sing ‘Black Spirits’, Macbeth appears. In short,

through this device of hidden music, Shakespeare produces

a sense of the weird and uncanny in the mind of the

audience. As Scholes writes, ‘it is music that prepares the

mind of the audience for ghostly happenings’, 29 as for

example in Julius Caesar. Not only music but also thunder

and lightning, Harris states, ‘almost invariably marked the

appearances on stage of supernatural phenomena’.30 Harris

is sceptical on the question of whether Macbeth’s witches

flew, and argues that ‘although free-flying devices were

available in the Banqueting House and other settings for the

masques and entertainments, these were almost certainly

not installed in any of the public playhouses until after the

first performance of Macbeth’.31 In the first performance

of Macbeth at Court and/ or the Globe, the witches did not

fly, and no Hecate scenes existed in the text. Therefore, no

stage directions called for flight of the witches. However,

these Hecate materials do appear in the Jacobean Macbeth.

5. Macbeth in the First Folio: Stage

Directions in the Jacobean Macbeth

Using few stage directions, Shakespeare gave actors the

opportunity to add a personal touch to the play rather than

28 Percy A. Scholes, ‘The Purpose behind Shakespeare’s Use of Music’,

Proceedings of the Musical Association, 43rd

Sess. (1916-1917), 1-15 (p. 2).

29 Ibid., pp. 4-5.

30 Harris, Night’s Black Agents, p. 151.

31 Ibid., p. 160.

being restrained by authorial directions. According to one

recent study of stage directions, Vickers and Dahl argue

that ‘dramatists wrote “literary” directions, reflecting the

story line, which the company scribe converted into

“theatrical” ones’.32 Dramatists may have sent their plays

with their lack of stage directions to the company scribe,

but these ‘literary’ directions were altered and transcribed

according to the physical characteristics of the playhouse

where the performance was to take place. The actors ‘parts’

were already supplied with theatrical stage directions.

I have already discussed how the Hecate materials were

added by the King’s Men Company into Macbeth, however

what I will investigate here are the stage directions of

Hecate and her crew in the Jacobean Macbeth. Albright,

noting that Hecate, a new witch, or witch-master, (Act 3,

scene 5, and Act 4, scene 1) was spliced into Shakespeare’s

Macbeth by someone other than the playwright, points out

that in both scenes ‘Hecate is associated with music: the

stage directions instruct the witches to perform songs,

‘Come away’ at the end of Act 3, scene 5, and ‘Black

Spirits’ at Act 4, scene 1’.33 However, it is obvious that, as

Albright says, these songs can be found in Middleton’s The

Witch and in the Davenant version of Macbeth (1663-4,

published 1674). 34 Davenant rewrote Macbeth for the

Restoration stage, adding new stage directions to the text.

Fiske shows the places in the play where Davenant added

scenes or made textual alterations to Macbeth. He states

that, ‘in a shortened version of Hecate’s speech, several

witches descend in a machine and sing “Come away”, after

which Hecate gets into the machine and is carried up into

the sky’ (Act 3, scene 5).35 The stage direction, in the First

Folio is: ‘Enter Hecate and the other three Witches’ (Act 4,

scene 1).

Similarly, in the First Folio, the stage direction of the

witches when they meet Hecate is: ‘Thunder. Enter three

Witches, meeting Hecate’ (III.v).36 In another scene the

witches again enter (IV.i.):

(First Folio, 142)37

32 Brian Vickers and Marcus Dahl, ‘All’s Well that Ends Well: an attribution

refuted’, London University: School of Advanced Study,

<http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/news/all%E2%80%99s-well-ends-well-

attribution-refuted> [accessed 10 July 2012], p. 3.

33 Daniel Albright, ‘The Witches and The Witch: Verdi’s Macbeth’, Cambridge

Opera Journal, 17 (2005), 225-252 (p. 228).

34 Ibid., p. 228.

35 Roger Fiske, ‘The “Macbeth” Music’, Music & Letters, 45 (1964), 114-125

(p. 114).

36 Shakespeare, Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623), p. 142; William

Shakespeare, The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, ed. by

Charlton Hinman (London, New York, Sydney and Toronto: Paul Hamlyn,

1968), p.750.

37 Shakespeare, William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies

(1623), p. 142.

160 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

Shortly afterwards, the stage direction about forty lines

further on (IV.i.) is:

(First Folio, 144)38

The first song of ‘Come away’ in the First Folio is added

as (III.v):

(First Folio, 143)39

However, the whole song of ‘Come away’ is given in

both the Quarto of 1673 and 1674.40 The second song is

‘Black Spirits’ (IV.i)

(First Folio, 144) 41

In short, the name of the song is only given in both the

First Folio and the Quarto of 1673. However, in the 1674

Quarto, the whole song is given. After the three Apparitions

and the show of eight kings, the witches disappear with

music (IV.i):

(First Folio, 144) 42

The same song of the ‘Black Spirits and White’ can be

found in both Davenant’s Macbeth of the 1673 version and

the First Folio of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In both texts,

only the first two words of the song are given.43 However,

38 Ibid., p. 144.

39Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623), p. 143.

40 William Shakespeare, Macbeth: A Tragedy, ed. by William Davenant

(London, 1673), 1-67 (pp. 38-39); William Shakespeare, Macbeth, A Tragedy:

with all Alterations, Amendments, Additions, and New Song, ed. by William

Davenant (1674), 1-60 (pp. 39-40).

41 William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623), p. 144. In

the Quarto of 1673, the name of the song is only given; William Shakespeare,

Macbeth: A Tragedy, ed. by William Davenant (London: 1673), pp. 41-42.

However, in the 1674 Quarto, the whole song is given; William Shakespeare,

Macbeth, A Tragedy: with all Alterations, Amendments, Additions, and New

Song, p. 42.

42 William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623), p. 144; the

Norton Facsimile, p. 752.

43 See ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ in William Shakespeare, William

Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (London, 1623), 131-151

the whole first and second songs are given in Davenant’s

1674 version, (Act 4, scene 1).44 St. Clair has argued that

the first Shakespeare texts may have been affected by the

intellectual property rights which applied to printed texts

until the mid nineteenth century. However, as St. Clair

continues, there is no intellectual property right either in

manuscript or in performance, such as the singing of a song,

the oral delivery of a sermon or lecture, or the performance

of a play, even although such performances might have

been transmediated from a printed text or from a

manuscript.45

Because of the two witch songs in Macbeth and The

Witch, it has been assumed either that Macbeth was written

by Shakespeare in collaboration with Middleton, or that

Macbeth was adapted by Middleton or the King’s Men

Company. According to St Clair, the fact that only the first

line or two of the song was printed in Macbeth was due to

intellectual property issues; if the whole song was not

printed, then it did not infringe upon another person's

intellectual property (copyright law did not exist in the

period, but one could still be punished for pirating other

people's published writing). That said, The Witch’s songs

may have pre-existed both plays. I do not find St. Clair’s

argument plausible because the matter here is not about

copyright law or breaching another person’s intellectual

property, but it is about the physical abilities of the

playhouses where both Macbeth and The Witch were

performed. The songs could be only performed successfully

at the Blackfriars since it was not only about singing and

dancing, but it was about visual spectacle as well, such as

flying Hecate with the Spirit and the other witches.

Through the cross-references to both Middletonian songs,

Stern argues that Macbeth is shorter than any other

Shakespearean tragedy which ‘seems to be a cut-down

version of a lost, longer text; its reviser may well be

Middleton, who was himself a playwright for the King’s

Men’.46 It seems that songs were not written directly into

the play text during Shakespeare’s time. Stern argues that

‘the pieces of paper on which songs were written were

commonly kept outside plays as well as (and sometimes

instead of) in them’.47 This means that the written song can

be easily lost while the play text survives. However, I do

not agree with Stern’s argument since no evidence available

in any pre-Jacobean witch plays included these songs.

Therefore, Middleton was the pioneer to use these

Hecatean songs. Wickham aptly argues that after the

successful staging of Middleton’s Hecate scene and the

(p.144). And Davenant’s Macbeth: A Tragedy (London, 1673), 1-67 (p. 41).

Hazelton Spencer, ‘D’Avenant’s Macbeth and Shakespeare’s’. PMLA, 40

(1925), 619-644 (p. 624).

44 Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. by Davenant (1674), p.42.

45 William ST Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 150.

46 Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (London and New

York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 60-61. See also Macbeth, ed. by Kenneth Muir, p.

xxxii.

47 Stern, Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page, p. 117.

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 161

songs, this experiment became the standard prompt-copy

for all subsequent revivals of the play. Therefore, its

spectacular elements such as the songs, the flying machines

and the dance were added to fit Macbeth. Moreover, these

spectacles were added to the Folio Macbeth by the time

when Hemmings and Condell came to publish the First

Folio in 1623. This thesis is in agreement with Wickham’s

idea that the songs and all the Hecate material were

definitely not added by Shakespeare himself as he had

already retired by the time Macbeth was revised, but are

taken from Middleton’s The Witch and appended to the

Folio text of Macbeth by the King’s Men. These witch

scenes in Middleton’s The Witch were specially written as a

response to the recent scandal of the Somerset family in

1616, making it likely that these songs did not pre-exist in

either play, and secondly, that these songs needed a

technologically-advanced playhouse in order to stage the

flight of Hecate and Malkin during their singing. In short,

the stage directions call for a flight in the two songs.

Therefore, the pre-Jacobean playhouses were not able to

stage these kinds of spectacular elements at that time until

the King’s Men possessed the Blackfriars in 1609.

6. Stage Directions in the Restoration

Macbeth

The Restoration Macbeth, an adaptation of the play

produced by William Davenant probably in 1663-4, revised

the Folio text into a tragedy of spectacle. The Restoration

Macbeth offers the modern reader an understanding of the

age in which it was produced, and about how theatres were

used by adapters and company players: how they could

increase the number of new patrons and popularity for

theatre and the revised plays. After the long-enforced

closure during the Civil War, the theatres in London

reopened in 1660. Most of Shakespeare’s plays were

drastically revised and made to fit the new theatrical

conditions of this period. However, while the classical taste

always demanded purity of dramatic type, the popular

demand was for spectacle. Therefore, opera, which was

completely new to England, and masque were the outcome

of progressing spectacle in the playhouses in the second

half of the seventeenth century. As a result, one can see that

both histories of stage spectacle and of theatrical

architecture are interlinked.

The revived version of Shakespeare by Davenant was

popular at that time due to his addition of music and

spectacle in the witches’ scenes. Schafer points out that

‘Davenant worked for the King’s Men in 1630s, and it is

thought that he used a playhouse copy of Macbeth as the

basis for his adaptation’.48 Davenant died in 1668, and his

first Quarto was published in 1673, with the second one

following in 1674. Davenant’s Macbeth can be considered

48 Elizabeth Schafer, The Witch: Thomas Middleton (London and New York: A

and C Black, 1994), p. xv.

as the most well-known of the adaptations as he tried to

show the new court and audience of Blackfriars theatre a

more up-to-date version of Shakespeare’s plays which met

the demand for spectacle.

Wickham argues that ‘Hecate continued to fly, sing and

dance throughout the reign of Charles I, for it was upon this

nucleus that Sir William D’Avenant [sic], assisted by Henry

Purcell, embroidered the next major variation on the

original theme’.49 Regarding the two songs, Evans argues

that it seems highly probable that Davenant derived them

from some earlier prompt-copy of Shakespeare’s

Macbeth. 50 However, Evans ignores the fact that these

songs needed flying machines and a sophisticated

playhouse in order to be staged since Hecate and the Cat fly

while they are singing. If the full words of the two songs

were in any earlier prompt-copy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth,

they would have been in the Folio Macbeth as well.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth was acted in a semi-operatic

version in 1663, whose ‘flying’ witches proved extremely

popular with audiences of that time and afterwards,

however this version was not printed until ten years later.51

This version featured goddesses, spirits and witches who

intervene in human destiny which were used to rouse pity

and terror in the audience. These scenes were conducted

with the aid of machines, presenting spectacles when

strange wonders were performed, as for instance, when a

group of witches were made to fly over the stage under

roaring thunder and lightning, and Hecate’s descent in a

chariot. Clark argues that, ‘Davenant was obliged by law to

revise Shakespeare’s original, whether he wanted or not.

But in any case after 1660 Shakespeare’s plays were

preferred in adapted versions’.52 Clark also argues that the

theatre in 1660 was very different from that of 1642, and

that ‘it was not only words and phrases that needed

changing for Shakespeare’s texts to satisfy the cultural

needs of a new age’.53 This is because in the 1660s and

afterwards, witchcraft was used for entertainment purposes

and as a subject of pantomime and fantasy, and alterations

were made in order to meet with the tastes of the new

theatre-goers. Davenant can be considered as a pioneer who

initiated the popular lust for spectacle. The change was not

only in revision of plays, but the performance space also

changed, with performances mostly taking place in the

private, indoor, playhouses which were intimate venues

with artificial lighting and a proscenium-arch stage.

Different stage directions were written for the entrances

49Wickham, ‘To Fly Or Not To Fly?’, p. 180.

50 William Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. by G. Blakemore

Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974), pp. 1306-1342 (p. 1341).

See also Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 139.

51 Marion Harry Spielmann, Studies in the First Folio: Written for the

Shakespearean Association, in Celebration of the First Folio Tercentenary

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), pp. 166-167.

52 Sandra Clark, Shakespeare Made Fit: Restoration Adaptations of

Shakespeare (London: Everyman, 1997), p. xIii.

53 Ibid., p. xIii.

162 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

and exits of the witches in the two quartos. Here, I consider

the stage directions in Act 1, scene 1, Act 1, scene 3, Act 3,

scene 4 and Act 3, scene 5. In the second Quarto of 1674

the stage direction (Act 1, scene 1) is:

(1674 Quarto, 1) 54

However, the stage direction in the 1673 Quarto and the

First Folio is:

(1673 Quarto, 1) 55

In the second quarto the three witches also enter the

stage flying (I.iii):

(1674 Quarto, 3)56

However, the stage direction in the 1673 quarto and the

First Folio states that the witches simply ‘enter’, not

‘flying’:57

In the stage direction in the second quarto the Ghost

descends, not simply enters (III.iv)

(1674 Quarto, 3) 58

However, the Ghost does not descend either in the quarto

of 1673 or the First Folio:

(First Folio and 1673 Quarto) 59

Even more interestingly, the second quarto specifies the

following for the flight of the witches in the song of ‘Come

54 Macbeth, ed. by Davenant (1674) p. 1; Christopher Spencer, Five

Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1965), p. 38.

55 Macbeth: A Tragedy, ed. by Davenant (1673), p. 1. First Folio, p.131.

56 Macbeth, ed. by Davenant (1674), p. 3. See also Spencer, Five Restoration

Adaptations of Shakespeare, p.4.

57 Shakespeare, Macbeth: A Tragedy, ed. by Davenant (1673), p. 3; First Folio,

p. 132.

58 Shakespeare, Macbeth, A Tragedy, ed. by Davenant (1674), p. 35.

59 Shakespeare, Macbeth: A Tragedy, ed. by Davenant (1673), p. 35; First

Folio, p. 142.

away’ (III.v):

(1674 Quarto, 40) 60

Unlike all the previous stage directions I have discussed,

this one explicitly names a ‘machine’. This provides

internal proof of the advance of technological abilities in

the playhouse in which this play was performed. It is likely

that a chariot has been used for their descent. It is clear that

Davenant revised Macbeth in the 1674 Quarto and added

flying in order to meet with the taste of Restoration theatre-

goers, which is almost certainly an interpolation derived

from The Witch.61

Albright argues that Macbeth was beginning to move

towards opera as ‘the witches not only want to fly, but also

want to sing; they need to push the play into the dimension

of music theatre, just as they sail through the unroofed

theatre building to the height of the moon.’ 62 He also

points out that it is ‘the witches who motivate the opera

lurking near the surface of the drama’.63 Popular demand

for a variety of stage spectacle became possible through

developing the spaces of theatres as well as adapting new

machines and equipment. John Downes, prompter at the

Dorset Gardens Theatre, recalls a late-seventeenth century

performance of Macbeth (although he does not give the

date of this performance):

The Tragedy of Macbeth, alter'd by Sir William Davenant;

being drest in all it's finery, as new Cloath's, new Scenes,

Machines, as flyings for the Witches; with all the Singing

and Dancing in it; the first Compos'd by Mr. Lock, the

other by Mr. Channell and Mr. Joseph Priest; it being all

Excellently perform'd, being in the nature of an Opera, it

Recompenc'd double the Expense; it proves still a lasting

Play.64

This important evidence suggests that ‘flyings for the

Witches’, like the ‘Clothes’ and ‘Scenes’, are new. It is

likely that they flew on a chariot (see fig. 4) rather than by

a free-flying wire (see fig. 5). Downes also writes in his

description of the production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth

that five new plays were acted there before Macbeth’s

adaptation by the Duke’s company at the Dorset

Gardens.65 This ‘new and sumptuous house was opened on

November 9, 1671’.66 Dorset Gardens was used for operas

60 Shakespeare, Macbeth, A Tragedy, ed. by Davenant (1674), p. 40.

61 Harris, Night’s Black Agents, p.160.

62 Albright, ‘The Witches and The Witch: Verdi’s Macbeth’, p. 229. See also

Macbeth, ed. by Braunmuller, pp. 268-274.

63 Ibid., p. 229.

64 John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, ed. by Judith Milhous and Robert D.

Hume (London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1987), p. 71.

65 Ibid., p. 33.

66 Spencer, ‘D’Avenant’s Macbeth and Shakespeare’s’, p. 620.

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 163

and plays demanding sophisticated staging. 67 In other

words, one can say that Dorset Gardens was used as a

theatre for popular entertainment; one also notes in this

respect Downes’s final point that the play was financially

successful.

7. Pepys’ Response to Macbeth

Pepys’s assessment, as a witness in the audience, of

Davenant’s version of the play at the Dorset Gardens,

provides further important evidence about how audiences

responded to the Restoration Macbeth:

[November 5, 1664]: with my wife to the Duke's house to

a play, Macbeth, a pretty good play, but admirably acted.

[7 December 28, 1666]: to the Duke's house, and there

saw Macbeth most excellently acted, and a most excellent

play for variety.

[January 7, 1667]: to the Duke's house, and saw

Macbeth, which, though I saw it lately, yet appears a most

excellent play in all respects, but especially in

divertisement68, though it be a deep tragedy; which is a

strange perfection in a tragedy, it being most proper here,

and suitable.

[April 19, 1667]: Here we saw Macbeth, which, though I

have seen it often, yet it is one of the best plays for a stage,

and variety of dancing and musique that ever I saw.69

Pepys praises the play for its being excellent in all

respects and for variety, especially in ‘divertisement’.

Although Macbeth was a ‘deep tragedy’, clearly it perfectly

met the tastes of the Restoration theatre-goers after being

adapted in a spectacular fashion. The Hecate additions were

in this way a strange presence in a play which was after all

a tragedy, but it satisfied the new tastes of the spectators.

Davenant presented a pantomime show of Hecate and

Malkin to the Restoration audience, and also ‘improved’

Shakespeare’s language through modernization.70 By the

time that Davenant’s Macbeth was performed, belief in

witchcraft was not very strong compared to the period

when the Jacobean version of the play was staged.

It is obvious that the use of stage entrances and exits of

the supernatural characters, of thunder (sometimes with

lightning) and music as an accessory of divinity, of the

change of scenes, and using ‘machines’, were all

characteristics of the Renaissance stage. In general, the

techniques of stage scenery and theatrical architecture in

England and on the Continent developed from the first half

of the seventeenth century onwards. Moreover, the number

of theatres also increased in the same period. However, I

67 Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, p.42.

68 ‘Amusement’, Oxford English Dictionary.

<http://www.oed.com.ezproxy3.lib.le.ac.uk/noresults?browseType=sortAlpha&

noresults=true&page=1&pageSize=20&q=divertisment&scope=ENTRY&sort=

entry&type=dictionarysearch> [Accessed May 2014]

69 Quoted in Spencer, ‘D’avenant’s Macbeth and Shakespeare’s, p. 621.

70 Spencer, Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare, p.1.

would argue that a taste for theatrical spectacle developed

in the second half of the seventeenth century. One can

observe how the stage directions in witchcraft plays tell a

narrative of the changing dramatic styles of the seventeenth

century. The stage directions in some plays were changed

as the technical abilities of the theatres developed and new

machines became available, including flying machinery,

mechanical trap doors and lighting techniques. More

advanced backstage machinery facilitated the movements

of the supernatural characters on stage. Stage directions

which began as simply ‘enter’ were changed into ‘descend’

in performance because of major changes in the

technological progression of the theatre. Theatrical practice

informed playbook writing, as scriveners, member of

theatre companies and then later modern editors altered

stage directions for the supernatural characters to make

their exits and entrances.

8. Macbeth: Stage Directions in Modern

Editions

The stage directions of the Three Sisters and Hecate in

modern editions are to some extent different from the early

ones. In the Arden Shakespeare edition, the stage directions

of the witches are similar to that of the First Folio, as are

the songs. Muir does not change any stage directions and

keeps ‘enter’ and ‘Exeunt’ in the entrances and exits of the

witches. However, he uses square brackets in signalling the

stage directions.71 Sisson admits that Act 3, scene 5 and

Act 4, scene 1 are both interpolations in Macbeth. Hecate

descends to and ascends from the stage. The stage

directions inserted by Sisson in the first song read:

Thunder, Enter Three Witches. Hecate descends

[Music and a song within, Come away,

Come away, &c. Hecate ascends.72

Enter Hecate, with Three Other Witches.

[Music. The Three Other Witches sing,

Black Spirits, &c. Exit Hecate.73

In contrast, only the first line of this song is given in the

First Folio. The editions of Rowse, Kittredge and Tyrone

Guthrie’s follow that of the First Folio; only the first line of

the songs are given and the witches simply ‘enter’. 74

71 The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by

Muir, pp. 2-163.

72 William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare: including a

bibliography and general Introduction, Glossary and Index of Characters, ed.

by Charles Jasper Sisson (London: Odhams, 1953), p.985.

73 Ibid., p. 986.

74 William Shakespeare, The Annotated Shakespeare: Complete Works

Illustrated, ed. by A. L. Rowse (London: Orbis Books, 1978), iii, 412-465 (pp.

445-447). William Shakespeare, Sixteen Plays of Shakespeare: with Full

Explanatory Notes, Textual Notes, and Glossaries, ed. by Kittredge (Boston:

Ginn and Company, 1946), 853-962 (p. 878). William Shakespeare: Ten Great

Plays, ed. by Tyrone Guthrie (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1962), 406-447 (pp. 430-

431). In the following editions the only first lines of the two songs are given:

164 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

However, the whole songs are given in Wells and Taylor’s

edition. The stage direction in the first song is exactly as in

The Witch. Wells and Taylor put in the same stage direction

here because they believe that these songs belong to

Middleton and they consider him as the co-author of the

Folio Macbeth:

[Spirits appear above.] A spirit like a Cat descends

After Hecate anoints the Cat, ‘she ascends with the Spirit

and sings’. By the end of the song, the stage direction reads

‘Exeunt into the heavens the Spirit like a Cat and

Hecate’.75 In Bell’s edition, only the whole first song is

given but not the second one. The stage direction before

Hecate ascends to the heavens reads:

[symphony, whilst Hecate places herself in the

machine.76

However, some editions print the whole songs as in the

second quarto of Davenant. For instance, in Charles Kean’s

and Wells’s and Taylor’s editions, the stage directions are

similar to that of The Witch when the Spirit like a cat

descends and then ascends back to the heavens with

Hecate.77 This shows how modern editors have adapted the

Folio text, and the effects of their decision in expanding the

text are to show more of the visual spectacle of the witches

on stage. The witch scenes, after being adapted, operate

more for comic or satirical purposes and were designed to

satisfy the tastes of the audience. Each one of The Witch,

The Masque of Queens and the Restoration Macbeth were

performed more often during the Royal occasions.

There are several plays thought to have been adapted by

Thomas Middleton in the Folio, including Macbeth and

Measure for Measure.78 Timon of Athens is also considered

The Works of Shakespeare, ed. by Howard Staunton (London: Routledge,

Warne & Routledge, 1869), iii, 466-525 (pp. 498-501). The Works of William

Shakespeare: gathered into one volume (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press,

1934), 858-884 (pp. 873-874). Arthur Symons, ‘Macbeth’, in The Works of

William Shakespeare, eds. Henry Irving and Frank A. Marshall (London:

Blackie & Son, 1889), v, 333-430 (pp. 384-385). A New Variorum edition of

Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by Horace Howard Furness (Philadelphia: J. B.

Lippincott, 1873), ii, pp. 190- 204. Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed.

by Dorothy McMillan (Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994), 1049-1078

(pp. 1067-1068). The Complete Works of Shakespeare (London: Strand, 1864),

674-692 (pp. 685-686). William Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by M. R. Ridley

(London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1935), pp. 63-68. William Shakespeare:

Macbeth, ed. by G. K. Hunter (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), pp. 102-106.

The Tragedy of Macbeth, ed. G. B. Harrison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1937),

pp. 72-76. The BBC TV Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by Peter Alexander (London:

British Broadcasting Corporation, 1983), pp. 66-68. The Riverside Shakespeare,

ed. by G. B. Blakemore Evan, pp. 1328-1329.

75 The Complete Oxford Shakespeare: Tragedies, ed. by Wells and Taylor

(London: Guild Publishing, 1987), iii, 1307-1334 (pp. 1323-1325)

76 William Shakespeare: Bells’ Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, ed. by John

Bell, 8 vols (London: Corn market Press, 1969), i, 1-71 (pp. 45-47).

77 William Shakespeare: The Complete Works: Original-Spelling Edition, ed.

by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 1101-1128

(pp. 1117-1119). Macbeth, ed. by Charles Kean (London: Corn Market Press,

1970), pp. 60-65.

78John Jowett, Shakespeare and Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),

to be a collaboration between Middleton and Shakespeare.

It has also been argued recently that Middleton either

adapted or had a hand in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends

Well. Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith claim that

Middleton was co-author of All’s Well especially in terms of

‘orthographical preferences’.79 However, Vickers and Dahl

do not support Middleton’s claims to co-authorship in All’s

Well. Dahl further argues that ‘there appears to be

substantial other evidence to confirm the original whole

ascription to Shakespeare, thus the onus of proof for

Middleton’s hand must lie with the disintegrators’.80 On

the other side of the argument, Gary Taylor believes that

Macbeth was re-written or added to by Middleton, and

argues that the evidence of casting and verbal parallels in

Macbeth suggest that Middleton was the co-author. 81

According to John Jowett, Middleton only introduced the

songs into Macbeth, but Davenant extended Middleton’s

songs by preserving the Hecate scenes and developing the

play further towards becoming an operatic piece.82 This

approach makes sense because Middleton wrote as

freelance for the theatre companies, and during 1613-1621

wrote most of his plays for the King’s Men. Thus, once

Middleton had introduced his Hecate scenes, and they were

staged successfully by the King’s Men, this undoubtedly

led the King’s Men to provide these additions to Macbeth

through the assistance of the Blackfriars’ flying machinery

and musical instruments. In short, the Middleton material in

Macbeth can be considered as a result of later revision, not

of the original composition.83

Macbeth’s witches are not the only evidence that witches

did not fly in the earliest texts and only did so after

Davenant’s adaptation of the play. The Late Lancashire

Witches is another example which shows that its witches

did not fly from the beginning, but later were made to fly

after being refashioned by Shadwell. In The Late

Lancashire Witches, it is important to consider the stage

direction of the scenes when the witches fly over the stage

and summon the devil, which is the most spectacular

feature of this play.

The Three Sisters in Macbeth

pp. 42-43, 90-91.

79 Vickers and Dahl, ‘All’s Well that Ends Well: an attribution refuted’, 1-9

(p.7).

80 Marcus Dahl, ‘A New Shakespeare Collaboration? All’s Not Well in the data’,

University of London: School of Advanced Study, 1-23 (pp. 2-3). See also

Marcus Dahl, Marina Tarlinskaya, and Brian Vickers, ‘An Enquiry into

Middleton’s Supposed “adaptation” of Macbeth’, University of London: School

of Advanced Study, 1-37.

81 Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the

Collected Works, p. 390. See also Gary Taylor and John Jowett, Shakespeare

Reshaped 1606-1623 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

82 John Jowett, ‘From Many of Your Companies: Middleton’s Early Reader’,

in A Companion to the Collected Works: Thomas Middleton and Early Modern

Textual Culture, ed. by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2007), pp. 286-327 (p. 294).

83 Erne, Shakespeare’s Modern Collaborators, p. 2.

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 165

Fig. 2. Image of the three Sisters if they flew into the stage through free-

flying wires)

9. The Late Lancashire Witches

As in the other plays mentioned above, Thomas

Heywood and Richard Brome’s The Late Lancashire

Witches (1634) also exploited public interest as well as the

dramatists’ interest in the controversial subject of witchcraft.

This play was first performed by the King’s Men at the

Globe in 1634. Before I come to the discussion of

authorship, I would like to consider the source of this play.

To capitalise on a current public affair, Heywood and

Brome drew the source of their play from the court

documents of a trial of 161284 in which twelve people

from the Pendle Hill area of Lancashire were condemned to

death for practising witchcraft on the Lancashire moors.

Another trial in London in 1633 involved certain women

from Lancashire who had been tried for witchcraft and

were sent to London to be imprisoned. Some scenes in this

play are about the depositions between witnesses and

defendants in the case.85

Seventeen women were found guilty of witchcraft and

four of them were sent to London, Margaret Johnson, Mary

Spencer, Frances Dicconson and Jennet Hargreaves. These

four women were arrested and accused of witchcraft in

Lancashire on 24th

March 1634 along with sixteen other

women. The main four witches in the play are Mall (Mary

Spencer), Gilian (Frances Dicconson), Meg (Granny

84 At this trial, Alice Nutter was found guilty with some others and is source

for the character Mrs. Generous in the play. However, the boy, the witches and

the incidents concerning witchcraft belong to the trial of 1634.

85 Robert Grant Martin, ‘Is “The Late Lancashire Witches” a Revision?’,

Modern Philology, 13 (1915), 253-265 (p. 253). See also Wallace Notestein,

History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 (Washington: The

American Historical Association, 1911), pp. 146-158; Montague Summers, A

History of Witchcraft and Demonology (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,

1926), p. 295.

Johnson) and Mawd (Jennet Hargraves). In the main plot of

The Late Lancashire Witches, Mr. Generous finds out that

his wife, Mrs. Generous, is the leader of some witches.

After she transforms herself into the shape of a cat, she is

then arrested and brought to justice by her husband. In Act

two, in order to get Squire Generous’s favourite wine, Mall

takes Robin (Generous’s servant) to London on a magic

steed. Mall is known to be a witch as she bewitches a pail

and makes it move of its own accord. In Act three, the

witch-infested wedding of both Seely’s servants, Lawrence

and Parnell takes place at Seely’s house. Squire Generous

rebukes Robin for lying that he gets his wine from London.

Then, Squire Generous tells Robinson (Miller’s son) not to

allow his wife to use the gelding again. As a result of

refusing her the gelding, she then changes him into a horse

and rides him to the witch banquet.86

(III.ii)87

Act four contains the witch banquet as it is described by

young Robinson. Gillian arrives with the boy whom she has

captured during a hunt, and after he is held prisoner by the

witches, Gillian turns him into a horse and flies off the

stage with him. Mrs Generous also arrives at the banquet

with Robinson. The rest of this act is about the discovery of

Mrs. Generous’s being a witch. Act five stages a fight

between young Robinson and the devil. The play covers

most of the witches’ typical activities such as the Sabbath-

meeting of witches during the night, witch banqueting and

the transformation of witches from humans into animals

such as horses and cats. The witches are summoned to

London and are medically examined by physicians and

midwives for witch-marks.

Heywood and Brome dramatized the news of the day

through the common report which provided accurate

information about the witch trials. However, Clark argues

that Heywood and Brome did nothing to ‘decrease the

popular fury against witches in general, but in this

particular case there were rumours of a royal pardon when

86 Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, The Late Lancashire Witches, ed. by

Laird H. Barber (New York and London: Garland, 1979), pp. 70-107.

87 Heywood, Thomas and Brome, Richard, The Late Lancashire Witches: A

Well Received Comedy (London, 1634), no page number is given.

166 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

the play was written, and more than a suspicion of the bona

fides of the two chief witnesses for the prosecution’.88 It is

not my aim in this part of the chapter investigate all of the

play’s scenes. Instead, I will focus on the witch scenes and

especially their theatrical effects of flying on stage after

being revised by the scribe. The main plots are assigned to

Heywood’s authorship and the sub-plots to Brome’s. In

general, after the play was revised, some scenes have been

interpolated while some of them were omitted.89 My focus

will be more on when the witches of The Late Lancashire

Witches started flying on stage.

10. The Co-Authorship of Heywood and

Brome in The Late Lancashire

Witches and the Stage Directions of

the Witches

According to the title page, The Late Lancashire Witches

was ‘a well received Comedy, lately acted at the Globe on

the Bank-Side by the King’s Majesties actors, written by

Thom. Heywood and Richard Brome’.90 In Act 6, scene 1,

Generous gestures to the summer weather when he remarks

that: ‘to sunder beds; but most in these hot months/ June,

July August, so we did last night’.91 Heywood was an actor

in the Queen’s Company and wrote plays for the same

company in 1633.92 He then transferred his service to work

for the King’s Men when he was writing The Late

Lancashire Witches in 1634.93

It has been argued that the play was written by Heywood,

but was revised by Brome. Andrews makes the important

point that as well as adding and introducing some new

scenes, Brome also changed the names of the witches and

spirits throughout the play, and also added the prologue and

epilogue and probably the song for Act two.94 However,

Martin concludes that the play was written in 1634 and was

a collaboration by both authors. However, Martin fails to

account for the time when the play was produced and the

time when Heywood was active in his career with the

Queen’s Company. Andrews argues persuasively against

collaboration in revision by referring to the proof that

88 Arthur Melville Clark, Thomas Heywood: Playwright and Miscellanist

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1931), p.242.

89 The discussion of this has been analyzed in both articles by C. E. Andrews,

‘The Authorship of Lancashire Witches’, and Robert Grant Martin, ‘Is “The

Late Lancashire Witches” a Revision?’.

90 Thomas Heywood, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, 6 vols (New

York: Russell & Russell. INC, 1964), iv, 165- 260 (p. 167).

91 Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, The Witches of Lancashire, ed. by

Gabriel Egan (London: Nick Hern Books Ltd., 2002), p. 75.

92 Otelia Cromwell, Thomas Heywood: A Study in The Elizabethan Drama of

Everyday Life ([Hamden, Conn.]: Archon Books, 1969 [c 1928]), p.13.

93 Martin Robert Grant, ‘Is “The Late Lancashire Witches” a Revision?’, p.

263. See also Cromwell, Thomas Heywood: A Study in The Elizabethan Drama

of Everyday Life, p. 27.

94 C. E. Andrews, ‘The Authorship of Lancashire Witches’, Modern Language,

28 (1913), 163-166 (p. 165).

Heywood was still writing for the Queen’s Company in

1633 when The Late Lancashire Witches was produced by

the King’s Men, the company for which Brome was writing

in 1633-1634. In short, Andrews denies that the scenes

assigned to Brome are based directly on the witch trial that

occurred in 1633. Therefore, the witch scenes might

probably belong to Heywood rather than Brome. Cromwell

succinctly states that Heywood in all likelihood wrote the

witch scenes but Brome may have composed the songs.95

Stern shows that Brome had signed an agreement with

‘Queen Henrietta’s Men in July 1635 to come up with

prologues, epilogues, revised scenes and songs for revivals,

so will naturally have thought of all such sections as

discrete entities anyway’.96 Brome altered and interpolated

some scenes in The Late Lancashire Witches but made no

changes to stage directions when the witches enter and exit

the stage. The stage direction, in The Late Lancashire

Witches by Heywood and Brome, in (Act 2, scene 1) is:

(The Late Lancashire Witches) 97

Again the witches simply enter, but do not fly in Act 4,

scene 1, where the stage direction reads:

‘Severall dores’ can be taken as good evidence of the

precise manner in which the witches are directed to ‘enter’:

the witches simply walk onto the stage at the Globe. All the

supernatural characters, such as witches, Spirits, Mrs.

Generous and Mall again enter and do not fly (Act 5, scene

1):

Heywood and Brome’s witches do not fly; their feet are

firmly on the ground in all the scenes. Although the witches

here transform their familiars into horses in order to

transport them to the Sabbath feast, it seems that Robin and

Robinson do not actually ride as no stage directions call for

their riding. They simply enter through several doors. The

writers may have intended to denote flying through the

words of the conversation between Moll and Robin, and

Mrs. Generous and Robinson, rather than flying machinery.

However, the stage directions of the witches in some scenes

read ‘fly’ when the play was refashioned and altered by

Thomas Shadwell 1681.

95 Cromwell, Thomas Heywood, p. 184.

96 Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, pp. 156-157.

97 Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, The Late Lancashire Witches (1634).

The stage direction is the same in Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome: The

late Lancashire VVitches. A well received Comedy, lately Acted at the Globe on

the Bank-side, by the Kings Majesties Actors (London, 1634)

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 167

11. Stage Directions in Thomas

Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches,

and Tegue O Divelly the Irish-Priest

The Lancashire Witches, by Thomas Shadwell, was very

probably sourced from Heywood and Brome’s The Late

Lancashire Witches. Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches

was first performed in 1681 and published in 1682. 98

Marsden argues that the political comedy of Shadwell’s The

Lancashire Witches combines ‘a conventional romantic

comedy with virulent anti-Catholic satire, setting a group of

energetic witches against an idiotic Irish priest and the

foolish neighbours who support him’.99 Shadwell imitated

William Davenant when he successfully altered Macbeth

by adding new scenes, machines for making witches fly

and new clothes for the actors. Shadwell also wanted to

introduce similar theatrical effects in The Lancashire

Witches for the Bank-side or Blackfriars audience. One of

the special theatrical spectacles of this play is the scene in

which the witches fly over the stage and summon the devil.

Shadwell in his preface to The Lancashire Witches says:

The bounds being then so narrow, I saw there was no

scope for the writing of an intire Comedy (wherein the Poet

must have a relish of the present time;) and therefore I

resolved to make as good as entertainment as I could,

without tying myself up to the strict rules of Comedy; which

was the Reason of my introducing of Witches.100

Through his preface, Shadwell admits that his comedy

was influenced by operatic spectacle and the reason for his

introducing of the witches was to make the play as

entertaining spectacle as he could. This is similar to the late

seventeenth century performance of Macbeth when

Downes records that Macbeth was performed with ‘new

Cloath's, new Scenes, Machines, as flyings for the Witches;

with all the Singing and Dancing’.101 Shadwell borrowed

various incidents from the earlier play by Heywood and

Brome, but he also refashioned the witch scenes in order to

entertain the audience by giving a new theatrical twist to

the old play. Shadwell’s Mother Demdike, who resembles

the Dame in The Masque of Queens, belongs to 1612.

However, the other individuals, such as Goody Dickison,

Mal Spencer, Mother Hargrave and Meg belong to the

alleged witches who were accused of sorcery in 1633.

There is evidence in the play that Clod is magically flown

into a tree-top and the performance of the aerial power of

the witches is celebrated in the following songs:

98 Thomas Shadwell, The Lancashire-Witches, And Tegue O Divelly The Irish-

Priest: A Comedy Acted at the Duke's Theater (London, 1682), (page cover).

99 , Jean I. Marsden, ‘Spectacle, horror, and Pathos’, in The Cambridge

Companion to English Restoration Theatre, ed. by Deborah Payne Fisk

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 174-190 (p. 175).

100 Thomas Shadwell, The Lancashire-Witches, and Tegue O Divelly The Irish

Priest: A Comedy acted at the Duke’s Theatre.

101 Ibid., p. 68.

(Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches, 26)102

This shows that the witches ‘fly’ to the sky accompanied

with the effect of thunder and lightning. The witches are in

the heavens and rule in the air. The physical power of the

witches is manifested in their ability to ‘fly’, which they

practice as a seductive fantasy when they ride to the

Sabbath on their brooms. Downes describes Shadwell’s The

Lancashire Witches, acted in the autumn of 1681 at Dorset

Gardens, as a kind of Opera, having several Machines of

Flyings for the Witches, and other Diverting Contrivances

in’t: All being well perform’d, it prov’d beyond

Expectations; very Beneficial to the Poet and Actors.103

The flight of the witches and the new songs give a

theatrical experience for the audience equivalent to that of

the revived Macbeth. Records of performances of The

Lancashire Witches in the seventeenth century are plentiful.

There were advertisements for a number of performances

of the same play which focused on the entertainment of the

witches and their visual spectacle, for instance, on 10th

August 1704 at Drury Lane.104 On 1st July 1707,105 The

Lancashire Witches was performed with Bullock as Teague

O’Divelly at the Haymarket by the Summer Company, and

the same performance was repeated on 25 July and

announced as ‘acted there but thrice; with all the risings,

sinkings and flyings of the Witches, as they were originally

performed’. 106 This kind of advertisement title assured

playgoers that the play would be staged with these

supernatural spectacles as a prominent feature, further

evidence that Restoration playgoers were interested in

operatic spectacles and magical shows. Summers also gives

various dates for performing The Lancashire Witches: on

29th

October 1707 at the same theatre and on 2nd

June 1708

at Drury Lane by the Summer Company (but no cast

recorded). It was performed on 2nd

and 3rd

August 1711,107

as recorded in The Spectator, at the Theatre Royal in Drury

Lane by the Majesty’s Company which was carefully

102Ibid., p. 26.

103Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, pp. 80-81. See also Lily B. Campbell, Scenes

and Machines on the English Stage during the Renaissance: A Classical

Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), p. 266.

104 John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in

1660-1830, 10 vols (London: HE.E. Carrington, 1832), ii, p. 301.

105 Ibid., p. 373.

106 Thomas Shadwell, The Complete Work of Thomas Shadwell, ed. by

Montague Summers, 4 vols ( London: The Fortune Press, 1927), 86-188 (p.93)

107 Genest, ii, p. 482.

168 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

revised: “with all the original decorations of scenes, Dances,

and Musick; the Witches Songs being all new set, and new

Dances compos’d proper for the Occasion”. It was again

advertised in The Spectator that Shadwell’s The Lancashire

Witches would be performed on 26th

May 1712, this time it

advertises ‘the original Decorations of Scenes, Dances,

Risings, Sinkings, and Flying of the Witches’ with both

musical songs and instrumental music. 108 This

advertisement here promised its viewers that the play

would be staged with some new spectacles featuring the

witches. Stage machinery in Restoration theatres was an

area of intense competition in performance of these witch

plays. This is because Restoration spectators were more

intrigued by the startling new effects made possible by

advanced technology. The play was also performed on 4th

July 1723, at the benefit for Widow Bowen and Widow

Leigh.109 It was performed on 13th

May 1724 at the benefit

of Chetwood Prompter, 110 and its last recorded

performance was on 30th

October 1727.111 During one

performance of the witches in flight, Summers states that,

an ‘accident happened, because of the ignorance of the

workers in the machinery, the Fly broke, and Mr. Morgan

(who flies on the back of the witch) with a Witch fell

together but neither of them were much hurt’. 112 This

evidence suggests then that the flight of witches was not

easy to achieve on stage, and this may be the reason that

some dramatists, such as Heywood and Brome, did not rely

on technology to perform their miraculous and supernatural

scenes, or there may not have been sufficiently advanced

technology at the second Globe for staging these magical

spectacles. These reasons might account for the fact that

these writers do not use stage directions for the descent and

ascent scenes.

The stage directions of the witches and the names of the

supernatural characters in Shadwell’s The Lancashire

Witches are different from Heywood and Brome’s. In the

first song the witches fly away laughing in thunder and

lightning (I.i):

(The Lancashire Witches, 12)113

In the songs of Act 2, the witches fly over the stage and

108 Shadwell, The Complete Work of Thomas Shadwell, ed. by Summers, pp

93-97.

109 John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in

1660-1830, 10 vols (London: HE.E. Carrington, 1832), iii, p. 106.

110 Ibid., p. 134.

111 Ibid., p. 199.

112 Ibid., p. 96.

113 Shadwell, The Lancashire-Witches, and Tegue O Divelly The Irish Priest: A

Comedy acted at the Duke’s Theatre , p. 12.

summon the devil, which is the most spectacular scene in

this play. The witches seem to enjoy their flight when they

mount into the sky, recalling Hecatian songs in both The

Witch and the revised Macbeth. They all sink and vanish

after they dance and sing:

And

(The Lancashire Witches, 26)

They do not only fly when they sing but Moll Spencer

bridles Clod and then flies away with him to Madge’s

invitation. The horse here is Clod whom Moll Spencer asks

to carry her where she wants (Act 3):

(The Lancashire Witches, 40)

This extract is very similar to the charm written by

Heywood when Robin refuses to get the grey gelding for

Mrs. Generous. In response, Mrs. Generous immediately

bridles Robin and drives him to the meeting of the witches:

Horse, horse, see thou be,

And Where I point thee carry me.114

In another scene, Tom Shacklehead hears a noise of

women in the air and Clod assures him that it is witches.

The stage direction here is (Witches above) (Act 4). Tom

shoots M. Spencer and she falls down with a broken wing.

This time Clod puts the Bridle upon her and says:

(The Lancashire Witches, 56)

Again at the end of the play, the Spirits also fly when the

servants enter the stage with candles (Act 5):

(The Lancashire Witches, 65)

There are many new stage directions in the play by

Shadwell which cannot be found in The Late Lancashire

114 Borgman gives more detail about the similarities and differences between

Heywood and Brome’s The Late Lancashire Witches, Thomas Shadwell’s The

Lancashire Witches, and Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Queens. Albert S.

Borgman, Thomas Shadwell: His Life and Comedies (New York: Benjamin

Bolm, INC, 1969), pp. 194-199.

International Journal of Literature and Arts 2014; 2(5): 155-172 169

Witches by Heywood and Brome. It is obvious that

Shadwell takes most of the incidents of the play from

Heywood and Brome. However, he can be considered as

sole author of the new stage directions he provided in the

witch scenes. The play was performed at the Blackfriars

once it was refashioned and revised by Shadwell, and like

Davenant’s Macbeth, it deals more with the vulgar and

farcical aspects of witchcraft.

During the time that Heywood and Brome’s The Late

Lancashire Witches was written, witchcraft mania was

increasing and some witch-hunts and hangings occurred in

English history. In contrast, by the time that Shadwell’s The

Lancashire Witches was performed, belief in witchcraft was

fading and witches were more in vogue as a source of satire.

In spite of this, the witches in both The Late Lancashire

Witches and Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches with Tegue

are a part of comic relief in the plays because they feast,

dance and sing, banquet, and transform humans into

animals. The writers treat witchcraft intolerantly, as all of

the witches are executed by the end of each plays.

Witchcraft is then depicted here in a comedic way, even as

it was taken seriously by others in the period. As in

Middleton’s The Witch, witchcraft here permeates the

whole play and it is not a minor part of the plot. The Late

Lancashire Witches was performed eighteen years after

Middleton’s The Witch by the same company, the King’s

Men. Unlike the classical witches of The Witch, Sophonisba

and Macbeth, The Late Lancashire Witches like The Witch

of Edmonton is about English and contemporary witchcraft

belief as its source is drawn from trial records. The stage

direction of ‘thunder and lightning’ does not accompany

Hecate’s entrances, as this theatrical effect is designed to

evoke the feeling of horror and fear; Middleton’s witches

are comical and carnivalesque. Similarly, no ‘thunder and

lightning’ effect accompanies the entrances of the witches

of The Late Lancashire Witches. Again, this is because both

plays are designed not to frighten the audience, but to

present witches as entertaining, part of a fantasy world.

Their activities are similar to those found in The Witch:

Middleton’s witches are able to cause impotence, indulge in

feasting and dancing, and transform themselves and their

familiars into different animals. Unlike Middleton’s The

Witch, the witches of The Late Lancashire Witches do not

make spells out of magical ingredients, and do not have

control over the weather. Similarly to Middleton and

Shakespeare’s Hecate, Mother Sawyer, Doctor Faustus and

Erictho, the witches of Heywood and Brome have familiars

in order to transport them to their Sabbath feast and in

return they allow their familiars to suck their blood. A

coven here is also dramatized in which the witches fulfil

their desires.

Unlike the witches of all the other witch plays, the

witches of Heywood and Brome have second identities:

Mrs. Generous has a husband and Moll Spencer is a

sweetheart to Robin. Another example, Master Doughty

falls in love with one of the witches during his searches for

them, after they had made trouble at the wedding feast.

Besides this, the witches here are not portrayed as old

women; on the contrary, the witches are young and sexually

attractive. For instance, Whetston blames those who bully

him for the claim that his mother is a witch:

WHETSTONE. I doe not say as Witches goe now a dayes,

for they

for the most part are ugly old Beldams, but she was a

lusty

young Lasse, and by her owne report, by her beauty and

faire

lookes bewitcht my Father. (I.i)

This context shows that Whetstone’s mother is not old

like Middleton’s Hecate, Mother Sawyer, Mother Bombie

and the Wise Woman of Hogsdon. Her beauty can seduce

men. This young witch figure is used here to replace the old

hags and beldams like those in the plays mentioned here.

Not only is Whetstone’s mother young, but Moll Spencer

also has a lusty appearance; like Mrs. Generous, she also

seduces Robin. Beauty as a feminine power here is used to

abuse men and control their power. The witches also do not

commit infanticide or terrorize their neighbours and

relatives, but they are busy feasting and conducting their

rituals. One can say that a new theme of hunting occurs

here when the witches hunt the adults and make their

familiars transport them for their Sabbath feast. The idea of

transporting witches from one place to another is

mentioned in Chapter Four. Some contemporary sources

believe that the witches’ soul is transported from one place

to another whereas others believe that their soul and body

together are transported from one place to another. The

witches of this play have the ability to transform

themselves and their familiars into animals and make them

subservient to themselves socially and sexually. In other

words, the witches have dominant power to subdue men

and make them obedient to their orders. This created the

possibility for a very effective and entertaining spectacle,

designed to inspire laughter and amusement in the audience.

Stage directions in some scenes call for music through

which the witches begin to dance:

Musicke selengers round

As they begin to daunce, they play another tune, then fall

into many (I.i)

Again they are dancing and entertaining with music

before the banqueting takes place. In other words,

witchcraft and comedy again come together, although the

witches cannot survive by the end of the play. Shadwell’s

witches appear more comic than Heywood and Brome’s as

his witches also fly off the stage with their familiars.

In conclusion, this paper has shown how witchcraft

became part of the theatrical spectacle in Restoration

versions of two early seventeenth-century plays, and this

has wider implications for how drama was transformed at a

more general level during this period into a more

spectacular medium. Furthermore, these comparisons show

170 Shokhan Rasool Ahmed: Witches before Flying

how Davenant and Shadwell adapted the original texts of

Macbeth and The Late Lancashire Witches especially the

witch scenes for the purpose of satire and to meet the tastes

of the audience of Blackfriars. The two revised plays

offered a more ambitious spectacle than the original ones,

and this study has shown that Restoration audiences were

more interested in the comic effect of the witch scenes. By

the time the two plays were revised, belief in witchcraft

was dwindling, and dramatists attempted to make the

staging of flight as eye-catching as possible through

advanced technology in order to present the flight of the

witches in a comical and highly entertaining manner.

Besides being comic and theatrical, the witches of the plays

mentioned here evoke through the community of young,

powerful, sexually-attractive witches anxieties associated

with feminine power, the subservience of men and lack of

independence. As well as being comical, these witches

could also manipulate men through the power of their

sexual relations.

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